by Jenny Oliver
‘Kudos to you,’ Harry said and looked back down to the baby sucking the bottle as if her life depended on it. ‘Willow and River. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a place called Cherry Pie Island.’
‘Are you mocking us?’ Annie asked.
‘Yes.’ Harry nodded.
‘Just because we don’t all live in New York City…’ She got cut off as the door opened and a brown-haired woman poked her head around it. ‘Oh my goodness. Everyone leave!’ Annie shouted. ‘Leave. Matt, go!’ she said, as Matt, clearly relieved to be able to leave the light-up reindeer, jumped down from his ladder and skedaddled out the back door with his son. ‘The dress is here.’
Harry watched the brunette looking nervous on the threshold. She seemed to be waiting until everyone left, including him.
‘Come in, come in,’ Annie called. ‘Ignore Harry. He’s an idiot with a baby.’
Harry tipped his head to one side. ‘Touché,’ he said, but the tired-looking brunette didn’t glance his way again. She was clutching a blue dress bag tightly to her chest. She had the kind of bags under her eyes that they show on ‘before’ models in commercials. He wondered if she was ill.
‘Is there somewhere we can go?’ she asked.
Annie shook her head. ‘I’ve got new tenants in the flat upstairs. Don’t worry, I’ll just lock the door.’
Harry pretended not to be really interested in what was going on. He looked at the baby. It had fallen asleep. Gently pulling the bottle from its mouth he tried to shift position, but she did a little whimper when he moved. He was stuck where he was. His left arm had gone numb.
Annie cleared the decorations off one of the booth tables. ‘Hannah, I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I literally couldn’t sleep last night. Is it good? Do you like it? Will I like it?’
He watched Hannah swallow. ‘I think you’ll like it. I hope you’ll like it. The thing is, it’s not finished yet, so you’ll have to use your imagination. OK?’
Harry frowned. He glanced at his watch to double-check the date. The wedding was in four days. She was cutting it a bit fine, wasn’t she?
‘I can do that. I have a great imagination.’ Annie laughed. She had her hands clasped in front of her like a kid about to open Christmas presents. ‘OK, show me. And, Harry, not a word to anyone about the dress, OK?’
He shrugged. ‘Seriously? You think I talk about dresses?’
Annie gave him a look and then turned her attention to the unveiling of the dress. Harry watched as the brunette lay the bag down on the table. She was definitely nervous but clearly trying to hide it under a confident smile and chit-chat.
‘So how’s it going? Have you got all your kitsch?’ Hannah asked Annie as she struggled with the zip that seemed to be stuck.
‘Great. I’ve been up and down the country getting every vintage decoration I can lay my hands on. Matt thinks I’ve gone bonkers but I want it to be like walking into a nineteen forties Christmas card, you know? All bright colours and old-school Christmas and, well, if you can’t go a bit nuts for your wedding when can you? Is the zip OK?’
‘Yep, no worries, just a bit stuck.’
Harry noticed that her hand was shaking.
Annie rattled on a bit more about the decorations. Both as nervous as each other, he presumed. Then as the zip got moving again, Annie stopped talking and put her hands over her face as if she didn’t want to look, scared by what she might see.
How annoying would that be, he thought. At his restaurant he quite often refused to serve people who didn’t like the first course. Told them to bugger off. If they didn’t like his stuff then he had no interest in feeding them.
Hannah opened the bag.
He heard Annie gasp, but annoyingly she was blocking his view of the dress inside. He peered over as subtly as he could and not wake the baby. His arm still throbbing with cramp.
The suspense was painful. Like one of those moments when he’d be forced to watch X-Factor at his parents’ house and the person on stage was so terrible that it made his mum cover her face with a cushion and his dad sit forward with glee.
This was a potential cushion moment.
Annie was silent.
Hannah looked like she might burst into tears.
Every muscle in Harry’s body had tensed in anticipation.
Annie moved slightly to her right as she reached forward to touch the fabric giving Harry the view he’d been waiting for.
Oh dear god.
What he saw was quite possibly the craziest, brightest monstrosity he’d ever seen. Shocking swatches of hot-pink fabric, a marshmallow frothy skirt, scraps of netting dotted with green and blue beads. Is that what wedding dresses looked like nowadays?
‘Oh my god.’ Annie put her hands over her mouth.
Quite so, Harry thought. She hates it.
‘Anything you don’t like I can change,’ Hannah said quickly. ‘But remember it’s not finished.’
‘You’ve done all this in just two months?’ Annie said, her voice a bit wobbly.
She likes it?
Hannah nodded.
‘I can’t believe it. My mum’s going to have a fit when she sees what we’ve done to her dress.’ Annie did a little snort hiccup that sounded like she might have started crying.
She hates it.
He felt for Hannah. She was holding the dress a bit like he was holding the baby, like her life depended on it.
‘But seriously, Annie, what do you think? Remember all the drawings you’ve seen – that’s what it will look like in the end,’ Hannah said, her voice wavering.
Harry felt his stomach clenching. There was no way, he thought, that she could transform this into something half-decent in four days.
But clearly Annie thought different because she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, and sighed, ‘I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I can completely see it. I can see the vision.’
And, while even squinting his eyes Harry couldn’t see the vision one little bit, he found himself exhaling with unexpected relief.
Feeling more like his mum poking her head round the cushion when it was all over, than his dad who always wanted the judges to stick the boot in even more, he leant back in his seat, able now to relax. Surprised at how involved he’d got. He never cared one iota what happened to the rubbish X-Factor contestant, he was usually just wishing he wasn’t watching X-Factor.
‘You’re a miracle worker. Amazing. I completely trust everything you’re doing,’ Annie said and Harry watched Hannah’s reaction. Her hands had stopped shaking, she was smiling and, to his surprise, he was smiling too. Grinning even. He stopped as soon as he caught himself. He was not a grinner.
But it was too late, Hannah had seen him and was giving him a coy little smile back.
Oh god, Harry sighed to himself, she thought he was flirting.
But then she said, ‘Urm, I think the baby might have been urm, might have been sick on you.’
Harry frowned and looked down. His black wool jumper was covered in white baby vomit. Great.
‘Here,’ Annie said, with a laugh. ‘Here’s a tea towel. You clean yourself up, Harry.’
Chapter Three
For Hannah, Christmas Day passed in a rainy haze of food, presents, stress and sewing. Her five-year-old daughter, Jemima, was up at four and then six and by seven she was dragging her stocking behind her and clambering onto Hannah’s bed, jabbing her forehead to wake her up.
Hannah, her sister, Robyn, her brother, her brother’s boyfriend and her parents had all gone to bed at one in the morning – each having been working on a job concerning either the dress or Christmas Day.
If Hannah had the time and breathing space to have taken a step back from the proceedings she would have realised how lovely it was – all of them dotted about her parents’ kitchen either sewing or chopping or reading the cooking instructions for the turkey. Her dad walking round making sure everyone’s glasses were topped up, her mum, Cla
rice, reminiscing about bygone Christmases while her sister challenged the memories and her brother, Dylan, asked Hannah annoying questions:
‘So you think it was Harry Fontaine or you know it was Harry Fontaine? I mean, did he just look like him or was it him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hannah said, pins in her mouth, kneeling in front of the dressmaker’s dummy hemming the silk skirt of Annie’s wedding dress.
‘Well why didn’t you ask him?’ Her brother made a face.
‘Because he wasn’t very friendly – just watching my panic, all smug.’
Her brother paused his flicking through the recipe book. Always the one to look busy but not actually do anything. ‘We ate at his restaurant once when we were in New York – The Bonfire – do you remember?’ he said, glancing over to where his partner Tony was helping Hannah’s sister ice the Christmas cake. Tony nodded without looking up.
Her brother went on, ‘He came out the kitchen and asked a table to leave because they were all on their mobile phones. Can you imagine? Just clapped his hands and pointed to the door. They were so embarrassed. You could see the whole restaurant sliding their phones from their tables and into their pockets.’
‘He looked a bit of a pain,’ Hannah said.
Tony glanced up from the cake that was being edged with tiny gingerbread houses like a wraparound street scene and said, ‘Very good-looking though.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I didn’t notice.’
She saw her mum look up sharply from her beadwork, smile and then look back down again.
‘What?’ Hannah asked.
‘I met your father at a wedding,’ she said, standing up to grab another strip of beaded net from the table that needed finishing.
‘That’s nice,’ Hannah said, one brow raised as she carried on pinning the hem.
‘I’m just saying!’ Her mum laughed and went back to her chair to start on the new piece of fabric.
Now, as Hannah lay in bed and Jemima prodded her and she felt her back click into place as she turned over, the aching from the hours of sewing taking its toll, she thought, not for the first time, of couples who shared this role fifty-fifty. And she considered what a luxury that must be. To have someone else in the bed who would let her sleep for maybe another half an hour and take Jemima to look at the Christmas tree, or go with her to make Hannah a cup of tea. Wow, a cup of tea in bed. That would be a treat. She had a sudden image of the good-looking guy, Harry, in the cafe holding the sleeping, vomiting baby in his arms but dismissed it just as quickly – he was not the type to make someone a cup of tea in the morning.
‘Wake up, Mummy. Wake up!’
There was always Jemima. How old did someone have to be before they could be put to use to make tea?
‘I’m here, I’m here! I’m awake. OK.’
She was so tired she felt sick, but as Jemima snuggled up next to her Hannah leant down and smelled her hair. All soft and warm and sleepy like when she was a baby. Her warm little pyjama-clad body pressed up close to Hannah, the grin splitting her face in two as she pulled chocolates and light-up pens and crayons out of her stocking made Hannah remember the last five Christmases that had gone by. And think how different each one had been. The early years when Jemima just shook the Christmas tree and all the decorations fell off, while Hannah was still in the shocked new parent daze, to now when she stood and stared wide-eyed at the Christmas lights in the street, cried at Santa in John Lewis, petted reindeer at the farm, and sang loud and out of tune as an octopus in the bizarre nursery nativity, making Hannah shed a little tear and Dylan stand up and clap while other parents ssh’d him. They were a little unit now. The epicentre. The two of them tightly bound with her relatives added on like pompoms.
‘Wakey wakey!’ Her brother barged in holding a tray with four cups of tea and a packet of chocolate digestives.
Tony followed behind, looking a bit sheepish in his satin smoking-jacket dressing gown. ‘Hello, Hannah,’ he said, clearly embarrassed to be in her bedroom.
‘Move over, squirt, make room for us all.’ Dylan shovelled Jemima over, making her giggle, and plonked himself down on the bed. Tony took the armchair in the corner, crossing his legs out in front of him and resting them on the corner of the bed. Robyn came in a couple of minutes later, her hair all askew, her glasses on wonky, complaining about how early it was. ‘Any why don’t we have stockings any more? It seems really unfair,’ she said, curling up at the end of the bed.
‘Because we’re forty,’ Dylan said, incredulous.
‘Yeah but I like a stocking and it’s Christmas. There shouldn’t be an age limit on a stocking.’
Jemima looked up from where she was unwrapping the foil off a chocolate Santa and said a little warily, as if she didn’t quite mean it, ‘You can share my stocking, Aunty Robyn.’
Robyn tipped her head and smiled. ‘Thank you, Jem, that’s very kind. But that’s all yours and you should enjoy it. I will have a chocolate coin though.’
Hannah sat back against her big white cushion and took a sip of the piping hot tea her brother had made.
As she looked at the mug, almost surprised that her cup-of-tea wish had been so easily granted, she realised that the actual idea of someone else coming into this set-up was unthinkable. Who could they be that she would allow them to sit here as part of this precious Christmas morning?
The door bashed open again as her parents appeared. ‘What a lovely scene. All my family together.’ Clarice put her hand up to her chest and smiled. ‘This is the reason I had you all.’
‘Except for Hannah, because she was a mistake.’ Dylan laughed around his chocolate digestive.
‘She was not a mistake,’ Clarice said with a scowl. ‘She was the perfect surprise.’
Hannah rolled her eyes. Ten years younger than her twin siblings, there was no doubting she had been quite a massive mistake – surprise – whatever they wanted to call it. But actually it was her parents’ decision to keep her, even though she had so clearly been a mistake, that had been the main deciding factor in her decision to keep Jemima. That if they had decided to get rid of their mistake, then she wouldn’t have been born.
Hannah had been so close to not having Jemima – to not have to sit with all her family and say, I’m pregnant and the father is some gorgeous bloke I met on holiday who seems to have lied about his phone number and I never knew his surname.
But she did have her. And she had sat with all her family, at the kitchen table of their big, old crumbling Victorian family house, and said exactly that. But she had ended with, I think I’m going to keep the baby and I’m going to need loads of help.
Hence why she now lived in a newly converted flat on the top floor of their house that used to be a junk storeroom, and had absolutely no idea how she would live a day without them all.
‘So,’ said Clarice, settling herself down on the sofa to the right of Hannah’s bed. ‘Here are your stockings,’ she said, pointing to Frank who revealed them from behind his back like a magician.
‘No way!’ Dylan was aghast.
Robyn looked delightedly smug as Frank handed them each a red felt stocking.
Jemima narrowed her little eyes and said, ‘Does that mean I’ll get my chocolate coin back?’
As Robyn tipped her stocking upside down and chucked Jemima a chocolate coin from the contents, Hannah reached her hand into her little red stocking, feeling the same childish excitement that she used to as a kid. Inside was an assortment of small packages all wrapped up with ribbon and a handful of chocolate coins in the toe. She got to the bottom expecting the usual tangerine, but found instead that this year it was apple and held it up with a bemused frown.
‘Dylan ate all the satsumas,’ her mum said with a shrug.
‘Doesn’t Santa bring his own satsumas?’ Jemima asked and they all paused, looking panicked to one another for an answer.
It was Clarice who leant forward and said, ‘Yes he does, darling, but because this lot are really far too old for s
tockings and he’s making an exception giving them to them in the first place, he asks us to supply our own fruit.’
Jemima nodded, her mouth full of chocolate Santa. ‘That’s understandable,’ she said.
‘Yes. Except then Dylan ate it,’ Clarice continued, with a glare Dylan’s way. But Dylan was paying no attention whatsoever and was happily ripping through the paper on his stocking presents.
Hannah, on the other hand, had laid all hers out in front of her and, as she listened to her mum and Jemima’s exchange, was deliberating on which present to pick first. Eventually she went for the square one – the heaviest – and instantly smiled as she unwrapped it.
In her hands was a simple wooden picture frame and in it the picture of her degree show dress that had featured in the style supplement of a national newspaper.
The press photographers had only been at the end of year show because one of the other graduates had a film star dad who called in favours from his A-list actress buddies to model his daughter’s clothes. But nestled in among those shots was Hannah’s graduation show-stopper. The dress that had launched all of this. That had been seen by Annie and inspired the phone call that had taken Hannah back to Cherry Pie Island and led to the wedding dress commission. It still made Hannah catch her breath to see it, her dream, all those brutally gruelling years later, fully realised.
‘You’re not crying, are you?’ her mum said, looking worried.
Hannah shook her head.
‘She is,’ Jemima whispered.
‘I’m not, I promise,’ Hannah said, wiping her eyes with the duvet cover. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘Tired and emotional.’ Her brother sighed.
Hannah got out of bed and gave her mum a hug. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered in her ear. ‘Thank you for helping me get this far. I owe you everything.’
Her mum pushed her back and held her by the shoulders. ‘It’s been our pleasure, Hannah. You owe us nothing. It’s your life now. You’re there. You’re on your way.’